thisiswrongggg

I hear stories around me and it seems like the remote is ebbing atm.

More and more companies are cutting down on it increasing the needed presence. At the same time they just don't have the real estate capacity to do it decently which means (at least in my personal experience) that you land in a noisy subpar open space (worst invention ever) for n days a week where you can hardly do any work.

Not to mention wasting time/energy in commuting.

It really beats me why a company would waste resources like that and I cannot explain it. The best I have is that this is some kind of power play but I'm not convinced. Am I missing something?

Say you had no need to make a living - imagine you win the lottery or something like that. You don't get to have millions but you don't _need_ to work.

Now imagine that you still _want_ to work but now you can select to work on whatever you want.

Lastly, say that you would want to maximize your impact on helping solving most pressing problems for humanity now.

What would it be? What would you work on? Just curious to see what strikes as a priority.

Given the looming crisis imagine you having a decent role in a rock-solid company/product. Now, would you take on the opportunity to a scale-up for double the salary? There will be no fall back to your previous role if things go bad.

I know this is a personal question depending much on the specifics of each but I just want to see different angles on it.

TIA

I work remotely so a lot of interaction is done via online meetings.

In some cases though I just don't feel like sharing my camera and I have to fend off such requests. And that does not always go very well.

Am I weird or overprotective with this? How do you feel about the whole camera-on issue?

PS: In the past I've quit an interview right after I was told that there's an always-camera-on policy for remote workers (i.e. you'd have to have a camera on for the full 8 hours you'd work for them). Dunno - it sounded like sh1t from Black Mirror and it gave off a lot of red flags IMO. This present situation kind-of reminded me of that weirdness (well it's not the only one but show me a workplace that gets better -as in more relaxed and libertarian- with time and I'll buy you a beer).

There's a lot of news regarding copilot and openAI and what have you. I'm not familiar with AI so I cannot really tell hype from substance here.

Should I worry? Do you think that some form of AI will be able to do the job of an average programmer any time soon? If yes what is your estimate? And how would you try to AI-proof your career?

I have an offer from a consultancy for projects in EU public sector. The salary increase is not bad and the title is a move up (I think). I'm getting to an architect role up from Senior Dev. WLB will be a bit worse though. I'm currently in a known product company in Telecoms sector.I'm in my 40s and have worked mostly as a SW dev up to now. The new role won't be hands-on as the roles I had so far (so I'd be very interested to read experiences from people that did a similar move).

Is that a good move professionally? Does it make sense? What are the downsides of moving from a regular product company to a consultancy? Would such a move increase my future prospects or narrow them? I need to be in business in some way or another for at least another 20 years.

No significant connections or network. I mean I won't be able to move to a high power/salary position to which this role would be a good stepping stone. Just me with my abilities have to be marketable for a good few years to come.

Thanks

Second workplace in 2 years that advertises itself as agile.

Yet here's how they do it. Minimum CI. No CD. Features that are designed through a long waterfall stage in the beginning of a quarter (how the heck can you design something to its entirety bfr even touching code I really don't know). Long QA stage with lots of manual testing in it.

In short, that's as far from agile in my mind as it could get.

And let's not even touch DevOps (down in flames AFAIK- btw there was a HN post a while ago on that. If you have it handy pls post a link here).

Am I unlucky? Is the job market I'm in stuck in 90s? (Fringe EU low salary market). Is agile dead(ish)? What is going on?

Just curious. Is there specific brands/models laptops that are more consultant/contractor-friendly? What is your preference?

Thanks